Relaxed Hair Journey: A New Beginning

I'm going to be straight up honest about this. Maybe my trials & errors will help someone else.

I'm no longer natural. No longer tex-lax'd. I'm now fully committed to RELAXED hair. Why? I'll leave that for another entry if requested. Otherwise, welcome to my relaxed hair journey. I've had issues that NO ONE could help me with. I started out on Black Hair Media forum. They gave great tips that didn't work for me. Some of the users mocked me, even. I decided to say "Screw you" and read books on african hair care (I have several book reviews on this blog). With this wealth of knowledge at hand, I set foot off...

Relaxer of Choice... LYE vs. NO LYE

(Left to Right) Healthy hair, Lye relaxed
hair, No-lye relaxed hair EEEK!

For a while, I had this mentality that a relaxer is a relaxer and it didn't matter which you used. Boy, was I wrong. I do a lot of research and I actually have a few book reviews on this blog (I'll try to add a search feature so you can find them or you can check the side bar for the proper label). There's a difference between LYE and NO LYE. Lye relaxers end up leaving your hair strand cuticles smoother than no-lye. This explains why for years of relaxing with at-home kits (Yes, even ORS Olive Oil), my hair has suffered extreme breakage and dryness.

I decided to choose Mizani Butter Blends as my new lye relaxer because I've heard so many good things about it. I'm a believer. My hair feels smooth and buttery soft! ALL THE TIME! Certain products make my hair feel even more soft or a bit more dry, but in general, my extreme dryness is cured. I know it is the MBB because I've used Designer's Touch which was okay, but I still got dryness. I upgraded to normal Mizani and I was quite impressed. MBB blew my mind away. It doesn't relax my hair pin-straight which is totally fine with me.


Breakage Issue

I don't know if you can tell, but IRL you can
clearly see when I started using MBB

I think changing my relaxer has drastically improved the health of my hair. Even though I was "tex-lax"ing before, I was still getting an embarrassing amount of breakage. Now, I'm using MBB, breakage has DRASTICALLY reduced. I'm using Aphogee 2-step Protein just because I have it. It doesn't help very much with my breakage, surprisingly. I'm using it until its all gone, just for good measure.

I also bought Redken Extreme: Anti-snap from UltaBeauty because it contains proteins that are great for hair, silk amino acids, and ceramides.  I use it after every towel-dry and I also plan to use it to protect my ends before a retouch. So far, I don't think it actually helps much, either.

Finally, Divasmooth. This product is a holy grail product for me. This has always dramatically reduced breakage for me (even though anti-breakage is not its marketed use). I'm going to use it up later next week & join their frequent buyer program. Why is it so good? I think it has to do with the sugar. There's something special about sugar... updates on that later.

Growth Regime
My goal is to have long hair and regrow my temples. For those of you curious and/or desperate, yes. I have seen temple regrowth success! I'll make a new entry about it later. For the most part, here's what I'm using to increase my hair's growing rate.

Vitamins - From time time, Flaxseed oil. I'm using Hair Vite vitamins.  Primarily because its cheap, easier for me to swallow, and contains calcium. I take 2 daily with meals. For you nosey folk, here's the ingredients:

The tan one is the Hair Vite. See how thin
it is? Easy to swallow for me.

Vegetable Silica - 500mg
Calcium Carbonate - 300mg (30% dv)
Magnesium Oxide - 25 mg (6.3% dv)
Iron Gluconate - 10 mg (56% dv)
Vitamin A - 5000 iu (100% dv)
Vitamin D - 400 iu (100% dv)
Vitamin E - 30 iu (100% dv)
Zinc - 15 mg (100% dv)
Iodine - 150 mcg (100% dv)
Chromium - 25 mcg
Selenium - 50 mcg
Copper - 1 mg (50% dv)
Manganese - 6 mg

Topical - I use my growth aid mix that is essentially Kimmaytube's leave-in + essential oil + MSM. However, I am tempted to try "Grow-aut oil" in my mix. I use this to make sure my scalp & new growth are moisturized. I massage for 5 minutes a day and if I can, I lay on my bed with my head dangling to further increase circulation to the scalp.

Edges - Step 1. Scrub w/ sugar scrub Step 2. use growth moisturizer Step 3. Keep slicked (& split end free) with Kinky Curly gel (or flaxseed gel).

Pictures, of course. Later. I'm beat!